We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…
- The Declaration of Independence
The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: sounds good to me. These rights pretty much cover the purview of government, not counting the obligation to protect other species - but that’s a subject for another day. For now we’re dealing with what governments owe their humans. First, some clarification according to my sense of these three basic rights.
The right to Life implies a duty to protect from harm. Policies that protect the right to life keep evolving in line with what’s possible and feasible. Think clean water regulations or standards of medical care.
Per the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Liberty is “the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman [which] has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights” The principle of liberty leads directly to the ideal of limited government.
The Pursuit of Happiness requires a bit more unpacking. The contemporary sense of happiness mixes "lots of positive emotions" with life satisfaction. That's too trivial, for me. I'm looking for a sense of happiness that is less about feeling good than about having a sense of meaning and purpose. As it turns out, my way of thinking about happiness is pretty close to that of the Founding Fathers.
When Thomas Jefferson penned the Mighty Declaration, happiness was more than "being in the zone" or an internal state that accompanies smiling and laughing. Happiness was frickin' virtuous! Happiness was akin to “felicity”, a sense of wellbeing that comes from fruitful labor in harmony with the world. Ok, that's not exactly a clear concept - but go with the feeling. When you’re happy, you are honoring something bigger than yourself; you are both grateful and wanting more, ploughing the fields of what life has offered. Humility and ambition – together at last!
And in the olden days, to "pursue" was akin to practice, as in to practice medicine or law. Practice makes one more disciplined, patient, knowledgeable and skillful. Practice is how we get better at something. To pursue happiness, then, is to improve one’s ability to be happy.
Happiness and its pursuit have partly overlapping feeder streams, which include:
Sense of control: you can actually change situations, allowing you to set goals
Sense of purpose: you're motivated to achieve your goals
Competence: you're pretty confident you can do what's needed to get closer to your goals
Sense of progress: you are moving forward and getting closer to your goals
So how do the above considerations factor into how to run a country? Getting there! I’ll start with a story.
Years ago I visited several eastern European countries, whose economic systems were still of the Communist "command and control" variety. One thing that struck me was how sullen and disengaged the workers in these countries seemed to be. They looked depressed - just going through the motions of their jobs with zero enthusiasm. They were pursuing much of anything, much less happiness. What was going on? What had squelched the spirit of these workers?
Some clues are in this sketch of working conditions in East Germany during the bad ol' days:
"In East Germany's 40 years of bureaucratic socialism, people had little chance to express initiative at work. Behavior by and within companies was highly regulated by central planning. Middle- and low-level management and workers had little input into how things were produced. Because there was no feedback via the market, there was little pressure to change things at workplace. As there was no competition with other companies, there was little incentive to develop high-level goals. The company goal was not to reach a high productivity level but to not make mistakes. Managers in the East were by and large more conventional and risk-avoidant than managers in the West, and they showed little independent thinking or achievement orientation. For these reasons, managers were not interested in workers' initiative and even imposed negative sanctions." Frese et al (1996) Personal Initiative At Work: Differences Between East and West Germany, p. 40
In bureaucratic systems like the one described above, workers are hemmed in by rules, procedures, and protocols. Going above and beyond the call of duty is not rewarded and may even be punished. There's not much workers can do to improve their situation; they're cogs in a machine, with little sense of purpose but to get through the day and avoid trouble. This is not a happy mindset.
Ok, but that was a now-discredited communist system. Wouldn’t participatory socialism be better? Probably, but not by much. True, participatory socialism would replace central planning with a more distributed system of command and control, such as industry boards and committees representing workers, consumers, suppliers, the local community, and “cause” groups such as environmentalists, job safety activists, feminists, etc. But the net effect would still zap the spirit. More generally, there would be a danger that these decision-making bodies “…would tend to represent existing ways of doing things and offer resistance to innovation” ( David Kotz, Socialism and Innovation, p. 104). System-wide resistance to innovation undermines personal initiative. Under such a system, workers become increasingly disengaged and passive, just doing what they are told.
Tom Boothe, co-founder of a food co-op based in Brooklyn, is more succinct about the problem with participatory socialism: “Pure democracy can be an invitation to little dictators.” Just think what all those little dictators would do to personal initiative. The more timid workers would just keep their heads down, do their jobs and not think too much. That disease would eventually spread to more and more workers. Who wants to incur the wrath of little dictators? Who wants to wait years for powerful interest groups and committee members to support or simply encourage experimentation with new ways of thinking and doing? Again, over time this type of system leads to disengaged and passive workers: yet another recipe for diminished well-being - and hardly conducive to the pursuit of happiness.
Governments need to address the core needs of its people - mainly housing, healthcare, education, and safety - as well as create conditions that foster autonomy, personal initiative and risk-taking. Laws and regulations should be predictable and consistently applied. Governments that successfully manage these few tasks enable the pursuit of happiness by clearing away the obstacles to an active, engaged, and purposeful life.
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This post borrows from:
How Would The Spirit of Innovation Be Kept Alive under Democratic Socialism?
How Bad Government and Economic Systems Undermine Personal Initiative and the Pursuit of Happiness